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The New Meritocracy
November 6, 2007
At the risk of boring you with career details that even my mother doesn't wish to know, I promise a payoff at the end if you stick with me. As a newly-minted librarian in the latter half of the 80s, I did the usual things a new librarian did to get ahead.
I tried to do my job well and I scraped together enough money to go to ALA and get on committees. A few years later, with a couple new lines on my resume and missing a sizable chunk of time that I would never get back, I realized that this was not my ticket to stardom. Yes, I'm a slow learner.
Lucky for me a few years later my most important mentor gave me the break of my career. By asking me to participate in her "Crossing the Internet Threshold" workshop, and soon to be book, she launched my name onto the international stage. Without that crucial connection, I likely would have labored at publishing journal articles on time cycles approaching the length of time designated as an epoch. So I got lucky. Seriously lucky.
But now things are different -- very different. Let me give you a prime example. Someone who only entered the profession about three years ago is now a treasured colleague, a published author, a highly respected blogger, and a prized speaker. And the truly amazing thing is that she is already mentoring a new librarian herself.
So in this Internet age, with the ability of anyone to create their own reputation through the instant publishing that the web offers, careers can be made in a fraction of the time that it took before. This is wonderful, as stars can be identified earlier in their careers and can be moved into positions that can take advantage of their talent sooner than before. Cheers to the new meritocracy, long may it reign!
Posted by Roy Tennant on November 6, 2007 | Comments (0)
